This patent document relates to systems, devices, and processes related to force sensor and transducer technologies.
The ability to measure forces and/or mechanical displacements with high precision may have direct implications on the development of advanced sensing platforms that can respond to acoustic, strain, pressure, and/or chemical signals. Measuring small forces (<1 nN) is typically carried out by sophisticated instruments such as an optical trap (or optical tweezer) or atomic force microscope (AFM) which acts as a calibrated force transducer that can directly measure the force and distance of a system. These techniques offer force sensitivity in the piconewton range, but it is extremely difficult to integrate these platforms into transportable, or embeddable, sensors that can detect stimuli such as sound waves, pressure changes, or chemicals. Significant difficulties exist in many microscopy-based systems, such as AFM, to image non-planar surfaces (e.g., side surfaces, inside trenches, etc.) or image all dimensions of a material. Additionally, existing techniques may not be sufficiently capable of quantifying forces occurring inside of a material, e.g., a cell.